A major exhibition on Japanese single family homes is still on for a few days here in Tokyo. I did not manage to see the same show’s version on in London (nor Rome) a few months back, but bought both catalogues to compare.
Inside shot from the MOMAT exhibition
It’s been five years to the day that I started writing this blog, in Tokyo. Herewith a look back at some of the highlights and ideas for the future. Some of it may come across as a big tap on my own shoulder, so read on being warned.
A few weeks ago I discussed the concept of “Tokyo as a slum” and how apt it is to describe living conditions in the postwar period. This is important if we are to glean how useful Tokyo’s experience is to today’s emerging megacities. A more fitting description, I found, may be that of “shared space poverty”. I took a good look at the 1963 Housing Survey for data to support that line of thinking.
1963 construction on the Metropolitan Expressway (photo source)
We are obsessed with real estate. Dinner parties in big cities in the West are often dominated by talk of a new house, an old one that was just sold, or another one that somehow, sadly, fell through.
